There's a surplus of content, and a deficit of attention...

By Mark Helfen



The world is filled with content. In fact, it’s overfilled, overflowing. Despite this, content is still king.

Or so says Michael Brito. If you want to connect with your market, prospects, or customers you need to break through this deluge of content. At next Monday’s SVForum MarketingSIG meeting, Brito will help you start the process of creating content that engages and conquers the clutter.

We will meet next Monday, February 10 at our usual time and place – the Citrix Startup Accelerator, at 6:30.

Brito is Group Director of Media and Engagement at WCG, an integrated media company. His business includes what he described as “the full spectrum” of customer engagement – PR, social media, web development, paid advertising, and web analytics. Most relevant to his upcoming presentation is his focus on helping his clients with developing a more effective content strategy.

He lists HP and Siemens as examples of his large business clients. He also works with small startups, such as Inrix, a Seattle company that helps deliver traffic information (as in road traffic) to various users.

Brito is the author of Brand, The Next Media Company: How a Social Business Strategy Enables Better Content, Smarter Marketing, and Deeper Customer Relationships. He will bring a few copies of the book to the meeting to give away.

Despite the fact that the world is overfilled with content of all kinds, “content is still king” when it comes to engaging your market. The presentation talk about how to overcome the paradox – a flood of content, yet content is still the best way to reach your customers and prospects.

“Brands need to think like publishers,” with a content mindset and strategy to get attention, whether written, audio, video or other. If you are a publisher then content is your business, and you need to have an operational plan to generate, distribute, and maybe even get paid for your content. In other words, creating content is not a special, one-off task, but a daily part of your marketing operations.

Your brand is already a media company, even if you don’t recognize it yet.

Brito is a fan of developing an operational strategy for content development and publication. It requires an understanding of the “busyiness” of people in your target market. Social media isn’t free, and requires human thinking and time (and money.) He promises a meeting filled with actionable information – “no fluff.” Attendees will leave with a 5-step approach to operationalize their content strategy.

“There is so much going on in the world. There is a constants surplus of content, and an attention deficit.” There are automated tools that can help create content, and measure the results, but strategic thinking is needed. Sometimes this might be changing your organization to reflect the geographic requirements for different kinds of content. Another approach might be developing an editorial boards. By building your content operation, and making content generation a regular part of your marketing operation, you can generate and distribute compelling content that engages your market every day.

So come by Monday, and turn your brand into a media company.

Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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